Songs of War and Peace

Subject: War and Peace
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 09:03 AM

Today I woke up.

Two more soldiers in Afghanistan did not.

Their parents woke up to a new hell in their lives.

In Israel and Lebanon insanity is taking over. So much sadness, so much hurt, so much hatred. So many people left without the ones they love. Never to hold them again and or to be held by them.

As The Candles For Peace are being lit all over Myspace, amongst nearly 100,000,000 people, as messages fly around the world of love and support, of sorrow and grief...I'm starting to realise that music is starting to raise it's head again....at LONG LAST!

The songs are starting to pour out of people, and they are starting to pour out of the young people too, as is a huge anger!

Is it the answer, finally to the questions,the disillusionment and the sadness that George speaks of in 'Flowers And The Guns'? Where he sings about all those precious hopes of the 60's generation, which seemed to have disappeared.

The Flowers And The Guns:
http://www.folk4all.net/TheFlowersAndTheGuns.htm

Are the 'flowers' at last starting to bloom amongst the blood and chaos? I think they are.

Listen to this song 'Peace In The Middle East' from Sabliminal, but, a warning, it's rap/hip hop music, but...simply get your head around that and realise that THIS is the folk music of a whole new generation. Try leaving any musical prejudices behind and simply hear the profoundly strong message coming from these young people:

http://www.myspace.com/sabliminal123

Then, you might like to read the Blogs of these young people, two Jewish, one Palestinian, and one group of many youngsters who just want to make a difference in their world:

Sundos:
http://www.myspace.com/ssssuunddooossss

Aliza Hava: (Aliza and her friends are busy organising Concerts For Peace over in Israel)
http://www.myspace.com/alizahava

Dganit:
http://www.myspace.com/Devinebliss

Kids For World Peace:
http://www.myspace.com/kidsforworldpeace

And here's another new song, to me at least, from Eli, a friend from Myspace, a very gentle, sweet soul......He's a songwriter and I found 'The Innocents' only the other day, which, just like George's songs, speaks nothing but the truth.

http://www.myspace.com/cranmorewoodsmusic


Only last week on our local West Country breakfast news, I sat there watching, as the presenter merrily told us of yet another soldier being 'brought home' for his funeral and how he was being buried that day with 'full military honours'. She said it with a smile on her face and in a chirpy voice, as if being given 'full military honours' made his death somehow acceptable. It sent shivers through me.

And back to today, I watched our 'prime' minister joking around with Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, just after the news about the two soldiers' deaths and yet more innocent people being killed in the Middle East had been on. Arnie offered him a part in the next Terminator film, if ever there was one, said that he thought our leader was a man of inspiration. The man in charge of our country, who is sending out mother's sons to be killed in the name of ????????....chuckled gaily and said it was the best offer he'd had in a long time. Obviously the irony was completely lost on him. But his insensitivity shone out.



If only the leaders of this world would sit down and listen to this man, perhaps things might start to improve.......

A Video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jEOkxRLzBf0&mode=related&search=






So....what new/old songs of War And Peace are able to convey how you feel about all this madness going on around us right now?


Lizzie

Subject: RE: War and Peace
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 09:27 AM

One more new song about the tragedy of war......

'Unfinished Lace' by David Stevenson, which you can listen to here:

http://www.myspace.com/davidstevensonmusic

It tells the story of a love torn apart by war, as must be happening on an almost daily basis in the Middle East right now. David wrote it after finding a small piece of lace in an old book one day, and so a whole story unfolded.

Our Great Aunt Annie's story, in a way. She was in her 80's when I first met her, her first love died in WW1 and her second in WWII. After that, she never loved again....

'Unfinished Lace' by David Stevenson:

"Its just a white lace fragment, a pale glimpse of the past
Held fast between the pages of a book
And each stitch breathes the grieving of a love that was lost
So hard that it hurts me just to look
They were bound to be wed the second summer of the war
In the sunshine on the first day of July
But that dawn on the Somme, the whistles sounded, he was gone
And on that day that promised joy her lifes love died

Unfinished lace, unwritten pages
One life where there should have been much more
Times lines are written on her face, a life of blameless grace
A life undone, unfinished lace

When the telegram arrived, she was working on the lace
The trimming for the dress she was to wear
She put down her hook, closed the lace inside her book
Turned her back forever on lacemakers wares
And the blinds were drawn down tight, through those sunny summer days
And they stayed down through the winter and the rain
Two more summers were to pass before the boys came home at last
And she smiled to hide her emptiness again

Unfinished lace, unwritten pages
One life where there should have been much more
Times lines are written on her face, a life of blameless grace
A life undone, unfinished lace

And the old clock on the mantel chimed the long years as they grew
And they raised a cross for all the dead lads on the green
With each first of July, she would ask the heavens why
Kiss the lace and dream of all that should have been
Eighty years, another war, more names upon the green
A quiet death to follow silent life
I hold her lace tight in my hand, and listen to the band
As the old men march to put an end to strife

Unfinished lace, unwritten pages
One life where there should have been much more
Times lines are written on her face, a life of blameless grace
A life undone, unfinished lace

Promise unbroken, the lace a token
And something to remember love gone by
As I hold unfinished lace, and in the silence see her face
Till the bugles call old love up to the skies

Unfinished lace, unwritten pages
One life where there should have been much more
Times lines are written on her face, a life of blameless grace
A life undone, unfinished lace"

Subject: RE: War and Peace
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 12:25 PM

There are two old songs that are like heads and tails on a coin. On the heads side is Dylan's "Masters of War" and on the tails side John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance"...

Between the two it purdy much says it all...

Bobert

Subject: RE: War and Peace
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 12:31 PM

"The Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

Lyrics seem really timely about now.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 12:33 PM

"Let there be peace on earth" is a favourite. Sung every Sunday at every Unity Church in the world.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 12:36 PM

For christ sake cornish have you got to us the deaths of people to justify your obsession with bloody myspace.
Get a life.
Quack
Geoff the Duck.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 12:36 PM

Bloody ghoul!

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 12:41 PM

Please, no more hatred.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbLsbqvl58Q&search=beatles

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 01:31 PM

No hatred here just contempt.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 02:05 PM

Also from Lennon - IMAGINE

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 02:14 PM

Leon Rosselson wrote his almost 12-minute-long epic The Last Chance after Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, yet even then it was obvious that the character representing Jewish Israelis like Sam, the epitome of tolerance, the artistic dreamer who liked to be different, had already lost the argument. His sparring partner Meier, the butcher who traded in pork though not on the Sabbath, hated not just Arabs but even Jews who had come to Israel since its foundation in 1948. Meier stood for the sort of one-nation, forged-in-the-fire, Hebrew-speaking Zionist state that the US loves to back with money and sophisticated weaponry while governments find convenient reasons for doing nothing, not even about international solidarity movements activists who try and protect Palestinian communities under siege and attack and are themselves murdered by the Israeli military. Rosselson is a non-religious, non-Zionist Jew who is quite clear-headed enough not to be taken in by wifty-wafty, politically muddle-headed, 'give peace a chance' ditty writers on a website run by one of the world's most rampant capitalist forces based in the US and backed to the hilt by their British poodle only too pleased to let Murdoch run rampant over our media. If you want to achieve peace, first identify the enemy.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 02:23 PM

Lizzie, go and listen to Fox news.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 02:28 PM

It is, presumably, her sole news source . . .

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 02:40 PM

I doub't it. Lizzie try the Bill O'Reilly video at the bottom of this page.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 02:58 PM

Well it ain't the Voice Of Palestine or The Jerusalem Post . . .

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 03:13 PM

Thank you Jon, I'll look at that shortly, but..I am very aware of what is going on....

Can't this thread, just for once, please be kept free of the usual myspace problems and insults. Just forget where the links come from and look upon them as being there to allow you to hear the songs. That's the only reason I put them there.   

And Diane, your missing the entire point here....I'm hearing things directly from the people whose lives are being blown apart, on both sides. These sorts of sites are putting ordinary people in touch, as never before. The young people that I have heard from want only peace. They are so very sick of it all.....It has to change and I think it will be the young people once again, who'll rise up together. They are beginning to find strong songs, just as previous generations have done and those songs are helping to make them think of a different way.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 05:03 PM

Ms Cornish has entirely missed the point; which was that a song written almost a quarter of a century ago already showed clearly that the argument for 'let's all be friends together' in the Middle East was already lost in the light of naked US aggression to further economic and political domination. For further clarification, try listening to The Price Of Oil and Take Down The Union Jack. To state the bleeding obvious, the changes needed are political, not a few drippy hippies singing We Shall Overcome.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Aug 06 - 06:00 PM

OK...who has the Quick Dry Cement?

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Mr Fox
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 06:29 AM

If you feel dissatisfaction,
Strum your frustrations away.
Some people may prefer action,
But give me a folk song any old day.

Remember the war against Franco?
That's the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs!

So join in the folk song army!
Guitars are the weapons we bring
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice.
Ready, aim, sing!

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Mr Fox
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 06:38 AM

Whoops, a bit over-eager on the 'submit' button there.

'The Folk Song Army' was, of course, written by Tom Lehrer and shows just how much use songs have in changing the world. None whatsoever.

To paraphrase Martin Carthy: "it is a propaganda lie that violence or the threat of it will get you nowhere."

It's the people with guns that run the world - always have, always will. Try singing to a cruise missile and see how far you get.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 06:49 AM

Peace will come
With tranquility and splendour on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords

(Dylan: Changing Of The Guards)

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Susan of DT
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 07:20 AM

There are keywords in the DT: @war @peace @pacifist, also @soldier and @sailor which may or may not be specific to war, including several hundred songs.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Robertlouis
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 05:36 AM

My, what an incredible amount of charity on display here, Christian or otherwise. Can't you lay aside some of your petty rivalries and obsessions just for once and see the unfolding tragedy in the middle east for what it is?

Hand-wringing will only get us so far. The platitudes of our politicians are simply offensive. Both Hesbollah and the Israelis have made it quite clear by their actions that they are prepared to fight until the last Lebanese - 1m people displaced in 3 weeks. All the ingredients for another 9/11 or 7/7 are here. It all comes round again.

The viciousness of some of the personal attacks here beggars belief. A little perspective wouldn't go amiss.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 06:18 AM

I think we are all aware of what is going on over there and that many of us are concerned.

I don't however believe that yet another round of MySpace links on the Internet will do anything to alter the situation and fail to see (except perhaps to launch your own attack) why you have refreshed this thread 5 days after its last post.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Robertlouis
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 07:31 AM

Been away on business, that's all.

If there were non-Myspace links would that be preferable?

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 07:51 AM

For my money The Ballad of Penny Evans by Steve Goodman is pretty wonderful.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 08:04 AM

Well I doubt any songs are going to make any difference.but it might make a change.

I've nothing against MySpace links and while I have a dislike of RM, I don't see that as a reason to try to prevent others posting links or using the service. I've just grown tired of "MySpace promotions" accompanied by screeds of links.

Subject: RE: Songs of War and Peace
From: Robertlouis
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 08:04 AM

And Jimmy Newman by Tom Paxton